The concept of runners shortening the stride length and increasing the cadence to 180 steps a minute has been coming up as a concept a lot me recently. I am not sure what to make of it. Some prominent coaches and running form experts are advocating it to reduce the risk of injury. At the same time a number of sports scientists are dismissing it as not valid. Most runners tend to naturally adopt a running form that is the most metabolically efficient for them. Any change to that tends to come with a metabolic cost. Those that advocate it are very passionate abut it, but as we know that the more passion there is in defending a theory, the less likely there is to be any evidence that supports it (Paynes First Law). I am certainly seeing injuries in those runners who use a 180 cadence, so I going to wait until the science tells me which is the better way to go on this one.
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